"I joined the Marine Corps Reserves and got side-tracked and ended up going to college instead," Toombs said.

But Toombs never let go of his dream. Now a doctor, he serves as a lieutenant colonel in the National Guard.

For one military man, the ceremony evoked his father's military service during World War II.

"He took a bullet to his head and he was paralyzed on his right side," said Robert Jegers, a veteran.

The greatest thing Toombs has learned in his experience at the VA Hospital is how little he sacrificed compared to others. One veteran in Toombs' care suffers from frostbite he got during World War II.

Students honored the veterans with essays thanking them for our freedom.

The ceremony honored each military branch and the veterans from those branches who attended.